A Vulcan Heart
by TomFoolery
Summary: Spock is crying, Amanda is tired, and Sarek is deeply conflicted. Being a first-time parent is hard, no matter your species.


Amanda's chin quivered. The screaming infant in the crib refused to be comforted, and beyond her distress and fatigue, growing frustration threatened to make her start screaming too. Why was Spock crying? Was he sick? What had she done? What had she _not_ done?

It had started yesterday afternoon, just before his scheduled nap. He had fed well, but the moment she laid him down, he had curled his fists into little balls, pulled his knees to his chest, and started to shriek, and then nothing would calm him. He had not been wet, hungry, chilled, feverish, or tired, he was simply inconsolable for no obvious reason. It had gone on for hours, and in the midst of his fit, she'd contacted the pediatrician but had been assured that "neonates often cry" and as she was a new mother, it would take time for her to "become acquainted with the unique personality of her offspring." That was easy for them to say: they didn't have to listen to Spock's persistent, high-pitched misery.

Sarek, the household's infuriating bastion of logic, had agreed with the pediatrician and she'd been forced to endure Spock's cries while Sarek left to go—where _had_ he gone? A state dinner? An academic lecture? It didn't matter: he was never home. He didn't know what this was like.

Spock was already a month old, but she could count on one hand the number of times he'd voluntarily held their son, and even when he did, he held him like a bomb that was on the verge of going off. He had never changed a diaper or given a bath or woken up in the middle of the night to help feed him. Given Sarek's personality and the nature of Vulcan culture, she hadn't expected he would be a particularly "hands on" father, but at times it seemed like he resented his son, and it was making her resent her husband.

She had woken up that morning in Spock's nursery, sprawled in the rocking chair with drool dribbling down her chin. She had found him content and cooing, and upon picking him up, it had seemed that the monster that had possessed her son the night before was gone. Until _now_. Beginning in late afternoon, Spock had started howling again, and nothing she could do would make it stop.

She understood all babies cried, but surely, they didn't all cry like _this_. So what if she was a new mother to a new baby? Spock wasn't just _any_ baby. It had taken so much to conceive this little half-human, half-Vulcan miracle, and he _was_ a little miracle, even if Sarek insisted miracles were illogical and their son was more correctly labelled as an achievement of science. The only thing her little boy was right now was miserable, and she along with him.

"Have you attempted to feed him?"

Amanda's eyes sprang open and she whirled around to see her husband standing in the doorway.

" _Yes_." It was a single word delivered as a challenge, rather than a reply.

"Perhaps he is overtired."

Amanda bit her tongue so hard she not only tasted blood, she was afraid she would remove the tip. The lower half of her face began to shake, then the tears came.

"Why do you cry?"

"Be-because-I-I-" She clutched her infant son closer to her chest, their wails falling into synchrony.

Sarek did nothing, which was the worst thing he could have done. Crying was bad enough, crying in front of an audience was worse, but she could think of nothing worse than crying in front of a _Vulcan_ audience, even if he was her husband.

"Have you considered-"

"Use some of your _logic_ , Sarek," she spat. "Do you really think I haven't tried everything I can think of to make him stop crying? Something is wrong with our little boy and it's like you don't care!"

She turned on her heel and marched toward the tall, narrow window, bouncing Spock up and down and kissing the top of his head. His feathery, black hair tasted like the salt of her tears. Still he cried.

The gentle hand on her shoulder some moments later startled her, but she managed to keep her composure. She missed bonding with Sarek and the comfort it brought. They had bonded so often during her pregnancy, mostly as a means of helping her balance the chaotic emotions of carrying a hybrid Vulcan child, but now that Spock was born, her husband barely touched her.

"Amanda."

"He's so miserable," she sniffed, looking down at the squalling baby in her arms. Spock's face was blotchy and swollen and his hands were balled into tiny fists. "This _can't_ be normal."

"If you still wish to take him to a healer, I am willing to escort you."

"Yesterday you said I was overreacting," she muttered bitterly, wiping her left cheek on her shoulder. "Then you disappeared for the night."

"I was the guest speaker at the final lecture in a series on-"

"The point is," she interrupted, "I needed you. Our son needed you, and you weren't here."

"I am here now and I am offering assistance."

She opened her mouth to reply, but gently closed it into a thin-lipped frown. Spock started screaming louder and she breezed past Sarek before he could see how frazzled and upset she really was. She steeled herself, waiting for the irritation that was bound to come when her husband told her she was being illogical, but he remained silent.

She started tossing extra diapers and a change of clothes into a bag, which was slow-going and difficult while holding an inconsolable baby. Feeling Sarek's eyes on her as she worked only set her more on edge, and when she spilled the bag's contents all over the floor as she tried to free the strap from under the bag's bottom to hoist it onto her shoulder, she glared at him. "Care to lend a hand?"

He bobbed his head and stepped forward, then knelt to join her in assembling Spock's belongings. Their fingers touched as they reached for the last diaper on the floor simultaneously, sending a warm feeling ricocheting up her hand. The familiar sensation of ozh'esta was a beacon of calm in the midst of an emotional storm.

"I'm _so_ tired," she confessed, wiping away her tears with the back of her free hand. "And I feel so helpless. My baby is crying and I can't do anything to comfort him. I feel like such a bad mother."

Sarek traced his fingers over the back of her hand twice, then rose to his feet to assist her in standing. She knew it was the best he could do; his stoic Vulcan demeanor wasn't designed to pull her into a loving hug, rub her back, and tell her she was doing beautifully and everything would be ok. It was what she needed, but it wasn't in his nature.

"Let us go," he said, folding his hands behind his back and stepping aside to allow her to pass.

She shifted Spock to her left arm and adjusted the bag on her shoulder. Amanda loved her husband dearly, but in many ways, he fell short as a supportive partner. She looked down at the screaming baby in her arms and suddenly found herself fighting a bizarre compulsion to laugh. It had never really occurred to her, but the tall, logical man trailing behind her had once been a helpless little baby too. There was comfort in that, at least.

"You are amused," Sarek murmured.

"Yes."

"Why?"

Amanda shook her head and peered at her husband. No, he didn't fuss over her, nor was he particularly affectionate, but he was _hers_ , and she loved him. She knew he believed this trip to the doctor was illogical, but he was willing to go. Despite her exhaustion and stress, she smiled, which earned her a raised eyebrow from her husband.

"Thank you," she muttered. "You know, for agreeing to take us to the doctor."

Without skipping a beat, he replied, "Your gratitude is illogical."

Amanda swallowed hard. Was there anything more complicated than the Vulcan heart?

* * *

Sarek sat as he always did, his back straight, hands resting on his knees, head and eyes facing forward. The waiting room of the pediatric wing of the hospital was quite unlike most public spaces on Vulcan, given that it was drenched in cacophony and chaos. Babies cried in their mothers' arms and toddlers who had not begun their first lessons in logic waddled freely about the room.

Amanda and Spock were with the healer now, and she had been in there for quite some time. Anxiety nibbled at the edges of his consciousness, but he quickly repressed it.

Life had changed dramatically since Spock's birth. Amanda woke frequently throughout the night to tend to their son, which had also disturbed Sarek's traditional rest period. He meditated less, and when he did, it was less productive. Amanda had become so preoccupied with caring for their son's every need that they rarely bonded anymore. He hadn't fully appreciated how much he had come to rely on sharing himself with his wife and experiencing her warm human nature to retain his logical control. It was a unique paradox, the idea that he needed an emotional being to master his own emotions.

"Are you ready to go?" The voice was haggard, but he would know it anywhere. He also noticed it was not accompanied by the sound of his son's incessant piercing screams.

Sarek stood and faced his wife, who was holding Spock to her chest and wearing an expression he could not interpret. Her mouth was hidden behind thin lips and her eyes were glassy and tired.

"Has the healer made a diagnosis?"

"Colic. He has colic."

"And is this condition treatable?"

"No." It was a single syllable, short, but delivered with considerable frustration and desperation. "But it's not life-threatening either. He'll outgrow it. Apparently, some babies just cry for no reason. They scanned every one of his molecules and he's perfectly fine."

"Then the pediatrician was correct—there was no cause for worry."

Her eyes suddenly focused on his face, their character shifting into something dark and despairing. "This can last for up to six months in some babies. _Six months_."

Several sets eyes in the waiting room turned to observe Amanda. It was unsurprising, given her tone bordered on hysterical.

"Let us go home."

Amanda took note of her surroundings and nodded robotically. They walked toward the exit in silence, but he was acutely aware that his wife was trembling. Her earlier assertion that he did not care for their son's wellbeing—and by extension, her mental welfare—was incorrect.

He cared for his son as any father would care for his child, but he secretly worried too, and none of his efforts to allay his worry through meditation had been wholly effective. Amanda had desired a child and had gone through extraordinary lengths to conceive one, and though he'd had misgivings, he had agreed. Children were the customary byproduct of matrimony, after all. But his marriage to Amanda was highly unorthodox, and therefore his child by her was also.

Thirty-three days ago, Sarek had laid eyes on his son for the first time, and seeing the tiny form clutched in the arms of its weeping, human mother had been a sobering sight. Spock, so Vulcan with pointed ears and green-flushed skin, and Amanda, so human with a face red from emotional effusions. The child, neither human nor Vulcan, had obstacles woven into his genetic code and familial structure that Sarek had failed to fully appreciate prior to his birth. Seeing his wife treat their son as she would a human child, he knew his son would face a lifetime of disadvantage no matter what anyone did to prevent it.

He and Amanda had agreed that Spock should forge his own path and not be persuaded to adopt a logical, Vulcan existence simply because his outward appearance was dominated by Vulcan features, but Sarek now feared that Spock would develop a preference for his mother's emotional lifestyle because of the way she coddled him. She hardly ever put him down and when she spoke to him, she often did so in a high-pitched and unnatural tone. She was humanizing him.

Earlier that afternoon, he had begun to wonder if Spock's ceaseless crying might be the result of some form of emotional transference between mother and child. Amanda was not telepathic, but it was possible that Spock _was_. It was too early to know for certain whether the hybrid child would be capable of typical Vulcan telepathy and even if he _were_ , it would be decades before he would have any serious mastery of it, but it was a well-documented phenomenon that Vulcan children could detect and respond to the emotions of their mothers, and even though Sarek had not bonded with Amanda recently, he knew Amanda's emotions were a sea of chaos.

This fact was demonstrated a short time later when Amanda tried to place Spock in his restraint seat in the rear of the vehicle. He began to writhe and cry again, and once his wife slid into the passenger seat beside him and shut the door, she followed Spock's example and burst into tears.

It was another long evening of lamentations; no one slept for any appreciable length of time. Sarek rose earlier than usual the next morning for a period of meditation and left to fulfill his days' duties before dawn broke over the horizon. He returned early to an uncharacteristically silent house.

He wandered through the sitting room, and when he reached the entrance to the long hall, his sensitive ears detected the soft rhythm of Amanda's snores. She was sprawled face down on their spacious bed, her wild, dark hair cresting her face like waves. He touched her cheek and found it rough and textured from the dried salt of her tears.

Sarek was tired, but his wife was exhausted. As a Vulcan, he was capable of enduring days without sleep with few negative effects, but human mental processes deteriorated more rapidly under similar conditions. He traced his fingers down the slope of Amanda's cheek; he yearned to meld with her. It had been so long. She whimpered and leaned into his hand, but did not wake.

A soft squeak from the neighboring room broke Sarek's reverie. He followed the sound into his son's nursery and found the infant lying on his back in his crib, making uncoordinated efforts to move his head and limbs. Spock was truly helpless.

Despite the fact that his son lacked the mental ability to communicate and his eyes were too immature to focus, the tiny fists flailing in his direction gave Sarek the impression that Spock desired to be held. He glanced back at the bedroom, wondering if he should wake Amanda, but a primitive instinct slipped past his logical defenses and he found himself reaching over the edge of the crib.

Sarek was not in the habit of holding his son, in part because he had no experience in infant care, but particularly because he disliked the sensation that accompanied close contact with Spock. It involved powerful emotions that were incredibly difficult to suppress, perhaps more formidable than those he felt when he bonded with Amanda.

He rested Spock against his left forearm, cradling his little head in the palm of his hand. The weight of the world stared back at him through his son's eyes. Spock had inherited his mother's eyes and they were so very human, so trusting and open. The rest of his features reminded Sarek of his own, and all of his worries for his son's future reemerged, heavy and raw.

After a time, Spock's mouth began to curl into a frown and his hands clenched into fists. He wriggled and whimpered and Sarek sensed another extended period of uncontrolled wailing was imminent. He glanced at the bedroom door again, but immediately rejected the idea of rousing his exhausted wife.

It was not only for her sake, but also for the sake of his own curiosity. If his earlier theory were correct, perhaps Amanda's despair over Spock's crying was only creating a positive feedback loop of unhappiness and discontent between mother and child. Removing Amanda from the situation would provide a means of testing his hypothesis. Perhaps all his son needed was a caretaker whose methods were more firmly rooted in logic.

He slinked through the nursery door and back down the long hallway before Spock's growing displeasure could wake his mother and made it to the kitchen just as his tiny lungs hit their stride. For all his logic, Sarek had to admit it _was_ jarring, holding a screaming infant. He closed his eyes, modulated his respiration, and considered typical methods for calming a crying baby. Should he feed him? Change his sanitary underwear?

He clutched Spock with both hands and held him out from his chest, examining the blue one-piece garment he wore to ascertain the best way of removing it to inspect his diaper. Caring for a child could not be so very difficult, could it?

An hour later, Sarek was willing to admit he'd been mistaken. The kitchen counters were covered in misfolded diapers and medical equipment and a large puddle of infant nutritional supplement was forming on the floor below the replicator. Just as his wife had done for the past two days, Sarek had exhausted every conceivable stratagem for pacifying a howling baby, but still Spock cried.

Logically, he understood that Spock was suffering from what the healer had referred to as colic, but there was little logic in the scene unfolding in his kitchen. Spock's unexplainable misery had become his father's frustration and helplessness.

A sudden thought struck him. He hadn't tried _everything_. One option remained, and it was a thing he had been conflicted about since the day Spock was born. He could meld with his son and attempt to soothe him through telepathic contact.

Many Vulcan parents melded with their children in order to establish lifelong bonds with their offspring. There were many benefits to the practice, but he had refrained. Sarek did not wish to bond with Spock if his mother could not, but he also wanted to maintain Spock's individuality. Melding with Spock to guide him throughout his developmental years would be the easier way, but he believed Spock deserved the opportunity to forge his own path, free from anyone's interference.

But now, sitting in his kitchen and staring into the tear-streaked face of his son, Sarek's resolve waivered. Perhaps the cause of Spock's colic wasn't his mother's emotional state. Could it be due to his father's refusal to initiate a parental bond with him? He lifted his son to eye level, watching his mouth twist around the sounds of his sobs.

He carried him into the sitting room and took a seat on the long black chaise lounge, awkwardly cradling Spock in his lap. He raised his hand over Spock's face, but he hesitated. Establishing a parental bond with a child was a thing that once done, could not be undone. He had wanted Spock to be his own person, and melding with him would rob him of his opportunity for true mental independence in the future. He needed to consider this matter seriously, _logically_ , but he was having trouble focusing his thoughts.

His head ached and his ears rang from Spock's repetitive screams. Witnessing his son in distress had a unique way of eroding decades of exhaustive practice in mental and emotional control. He adjusted the infant, switching him over to his left arm and propping him up on his lower chest. He lifted his hand a second time, but again, was paralyzed by indecision.

Then something wholly unexpected happened.

* * *

Amanda was awake long before she actually opened her eyes. Her thoughts drifted back and forth, from Sarek to Spock and back again. Spock would surely start crying any moment, and she wanted to enjoy this brief respite.

But something was not quite right. What time was it? Her eyes sprang open and she was shocked to find the room was dark. Was it already night time? How long had she been asleep? _How_ could she have possibly slept so long? Even before he'd developed colic, Spock would have never allowed her to go for more than three hours without demanding care and attention.

She threw her legs over the side of the bed, rubbed her face with her hands, and then ran her fingers through her tangled hair. She sniffed her underarms and grimaced. Her attention to personal hygiene had waned since Spock's arrival. She brushed the stray tendrils away from her face and staggered forward into the adjacent room.

" _Lights_ ," she whispered. She rubbed her tired eyes with the knuckles of her forefingers and said in a soft tone, "Hello, sleepy boy. Thank you so much for letting mommy sleep. I bet you're hungry though, so let's— _ah_!"

Amanda's hands wrapped around the crib railing. She blinked furiously, refusing to believe her eyes. Her son was gone. She flipped over the bedding and tore around the small room, but she wasn't mistaken. Her baby boy wasn't here.

"No no no no no no _no_!" she shrieked, pacing around the room and grabbing her temples. "Spock! Oh no! _Spock_!"

Tears of terror raced down her face as she sprinted from the room and out into the main hall. She wasn't sure what she was looking for. Spock was only a month old and couldn't lift his head for more than a few seconds, let alone crawl out of his crib and wander away in the middle of the night. Someone had taken him. She needed to call the police. She should call Sarek. Where _was_ Sarek? "Where's my baby?" she wailed, her voice garbled and barely recognizable.

" _Amanda_ …" The voice was quiet and resolute and came from within her mind rather than from an external source. It came from the mating bond she shared with her husband. It had been so long since they had communicated that way that she'd almost forgotten what it was like.

"Sarek?" she yelped, racing out of the long hallway and into the main entry.

"I urge you to lower your voice." She froze, trying to decide whether she'd actually heard the words or sensed them through her telepathic link with Sarek.

She tiptoed forward, her sweaty, bare feet making gentle slapping sounds on the tile floor. When she found her husband and son in the sitting room, she struggled to make sense of the scene before her. There was Sarek, reclining on the long black chaise, and then there was Spock, curled up on Sarek's stomach, wide awake and perfectly content.

"What- how- when…?"

"As I am unable to directly ask Spock what it is about this particular position that calms him, I cannot render an adequate explanation for his current placid mood, but I hypothesize the sound of my heartbeat may be offering him some comfort. Whenever I attempt to reposition him, he begins to cry again."

Amanda's jaw fell open and she covered it with her hand as she stumbled forward. "I can't believe it."

"Explain."

"You got him to stop crying, you- you're holding him. I-I just-" She slumped to her knees by Sarek's side and stroked Spock's ear with her thumb. "How did you know this would work?"

"I didn't. I discovered this by chance."

"How long have you been like this?"

"Approximately one hour."

"And he hasn't cried?"

"Not as long as he is able to remain with his head pressed against my chest."

Amanda tore her eyes away from her son to look at her husband. His eyes were as they always were—dark, patient, and generally void of emotion.

"I love you."

"A sentiment you have expressed on many occasions."

"It's true."

"I know."

Amanda sighed and rolled her eyes. The Vulcan heart was as closed off as it was complex, but she didn't need to hear him say the words to know he felt the same way.

"Have you fed him, by any chance?"

"I made an attempt, using the nutritional formula from the replicator, but he would not eat."

She nodded and rose to her feet. She preferred to breastfeed her baby, but the composition of human breastmilk lacked sufficient iron and had more fat than a Vulcan infant needed, so she had to supplement his diet with formula. It sometimes bothered her that she couldn't give her son everything he needed, but she supposed she was in for a lifetime of that, what with Spock being half-Vulcan, and to be honest, all she really cared about was that he was fed and healthy.

The lights came on automatically as she entered the kitchen and what she found there sent her reeling. Diapers and the entire contents of their home first aid kit were spread over the counters and formula dripped from the replicator into an enormous puddle on the floor. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and tried to hold back a laugh.

"Messes aren't forever," she muttered, treading around the puddle to fill a bottle.

She returned to the sitting room with the bottle and a towel, slid onto her knees next to the black chaise, and glanced at Sarek. "Do you want to give him to me and see if he'll eat without fussing, or do you want to try and feed him?"

"I defer to your judgment."

"Why don't you give it a try?" she asked, suddenly giddy at the idea of her husband willing to interact with Spock in any kind of fatherly way.

"Very well."

"Ok then. Is there any chance you could sit up just a little bit so he's more upright?"

Sarek nodded and pushed himself up on his elbows. Spock whimpered, but he did not cry. She slid the towel under Spock's head and stroked his cheek to get him to root for the bottle, and once his lips made contact, he began to suckle hungrily.

Amanda held the bottle at first, then reached for Sarek's hand to help support it. When she was sure he had everything under control, she started to pull away, but his first two forefingers followed her hand.

She met his eyes and found a soft emotion had replaced the earlier dispassionate expression. She touched her fingers to his, enjoying the wonderful feeling of ozh'esta and the simple joy of being close to her husband.

She leaned forward and rested her cheek on his chest, very near to Spock's head. They joined their forefingers with gentle traces and sat in silence, save for the sucking sounds of a hungry child. _Their_ child.

Amanda looked up at Sarek and smiled. The Vulcan heart had many surprising talents.


End file.
